Tis the Season
by Clara Barton
Summary: Trowa attends his first faculty Christmas party.


And… thus I shall begin writing things for the holiday season.

Just a short something for Together Thursday. The college name SHOULD be fictional but if there is some college out there with the same name, it's not supposed to be.

Warnings: language

Pairing: 2x3

Tis the Season

Despite the fact that it was a small college, Trowa only knew the names of a dozen other faculty at Smithson College. He was new, this was only his first semester, so that likely had something to do with the fact that the only people he was on a first name basis with were in the Art Department, but he also knew that a large part of the problem was his inability and disinterest in socializing. Catharine, the one exception to his first name basis - a Biology professor who had been assigned as his faculty mentor during the first week of new faculty orientation, had warned him that he needed to be social, needed to talk to people outside of the Art Department to make his tenure promotion easier. But Trowa figured he had six years before that mattered - really three, since apparently the mid tenure review was an indescribable ordeal - so he allowed himself to remain quiet at faculty meetings and committee meetings. Even at his own departmental meetings he stayed silent, which had resulted in Hilde, the drawing instructor, jumping out of her seat the one time he had spoken up.

Still, perhaps it might have been a good idea to meet at least a few other people outside of his department, Trowa reflected as he looked around the milling crowds at the President's Christmas party. It was an all day affair, a kind of open house event for the college faculty and staff to come and rub elbows with the college President and his wife at their home, the lavish neoclassical mansion at one corner of the campus.

Trowa had been an idiot, had scheduled a meeting with a student during the time when the rest of the Art faculty had 'dined and dashed' as Hilde put it - spending no more than twenty minutes at the house before fleeing en masse - and so Trowa had to brave it on his own, since no one had been willing to endure it _twice._

He had only been in the house for five minutes, yet he had been greeted by the college President twice and introduced to his wife three times. The wife, at least, had remembered Trowa from an event earlier in the year and had looked sheepish when he was introduced to her again each time.

But aside from that - he had been left on his own. So he wandered from room to room, clutching the glass of champagne that had been shoved into his hand tightly, terrified of dropping the glass or spilling its contents on any of the antique pieces in the house.

He was left relatively alone, though a few people nodded at him and one of the housekeepers, Ginger, who cleaned the Art offices, greeted him and Trowa managed to exchange a few banal pleasantries with her before she was pulled away.

He went upstairs, walked down the long hall and glanced in all of the open doors, at the immaculately made beds and decorated walls and he wondered what it was like to have this kind of life, to be on view to the public, to be judged and criticized for your taste in throw pillows and the music you played for guests and the too strong cinnamon candles you burned.

He turned a corner and noticed there was yet another flight of stairs. From the outside the house looked as though it had a windowed attic, but Trowa had no idea that there were stairs leading up to it. He also had no idea if he was allowed to go up.

So, of course, he went up.

He hadn't realized there were skylights on the back side of the house, or that the _entire_ back roof seemed to be made of glass. It had the effect of turning the attic into a sunroom and it was beautiful.

There was a decorated Christmas tree in every single room in the house, but the one up here was different, decorated in simple wooden, old-fashioned decorations of toys and globes and it made Trowa feel vaguely nostalgic. His grandmother had had a tree like this.

"Can I help you?"

Trowa looked up at the voice, startled, and he succeeded in spilling the champagne all over himself and dropping the glass.

"Damnit."

He knelt down to try to pick up the pieces.

"Wait - wait, don't cut yourself."

It was the voice again, and now Trowa saw who it belonged to. A long haired young man in a horrifically ugly red Christmas sweater with reindeers dancing all over it. He was completely unfamiliar to Trowa.

"Who are you?"

The man knelt down beside Trowa and offered him a napkin.

Trowa stared at it dumbly.

"You're bleeding - you already cut your hand."

Trowa looked down and sure enough, he was bleeding.

"Thank you." He accepted the napkin and pressed it against his palm.

"I'm Duo Maxwell," the young man finally answered Trowa's question once they had gathered up all of the glass and disposed of it in a trashcan under a writing desk in one corner of the room.

Maxwell.

Trowa frowned.

Duo sighed.

"Yeah, yeah. The President of the college is my Dad."

"Are you a student here?" He looked young enough to be, and there were almost two thousand students on campus - Trowa had only had the smallest fraction of those students in his classes this semester.

"Ah, no. I'm in grad school."

"Oh."

"And you…?" Duo asked.

"I work for the college."

"It's weird, but I'd kind of already figured out that much. It had to be that, or you're a burglar with exceptionally bad timing."

Trowa arched an eyebrow.

"Maybe I have exceptionally good timing - no one would suspect theft when there are so many witnesses."

"Well, in that case, please steal me," Duo begged.

Trowa frowned.

Duo sighed and shook his head. He walked back over to a couch that glowed with afternoon light and flung himself onto it.

"I'm stuck here - they asked me to come visit for the weekend but neglected to mention this party and of course I don't have a car and they were all 'oh, it will be nice, you can meet people and -'"

"Are you telling me your idea of a good time isn't to meet a bunch of middle aged academics?"

Duo snorted a laugh. He shot Trowa a speculative look.

"You aren't a middle aged academic."

"Not yet."

"You're a teacher?"

Trowa nodded. He felt awkward just standing in the middle of the room so he walked over to the couch. Duo bent his legs so that Trowa had enough room to sit at the opposite end of the couch.

"Ceramics."

"Oh, cool. Yeah, I remember my Dad saying what a coup it was to get you - Trowa Barton?."

Trowa arched an eyebrow but he nodded.

"Something about you being really talented and already having good connections and he figured you'd be instrumental in helping raise the profile of the college and some shit like that?"

"I suppose so."

He hadn't realized that his connections had played that big of a part in his hiring, and he wondered how much it had counted for him that he had shown several collections in Winner owned galleries. He wondered if he had been hired for the express purpose of trying to milk Quatre Winner, his childhood friend, for money.

"Hey, don't look so tragic - apparently my Mom thinks you're work is amazing."

Which might explain why she had remembered him.

Still.

"Shit. Sorry. People always tell me I talk too much."

"What are you going to grad school for?" Trowa asked Duo, hoping to change the conversation.

Duo smirked and folded his hands behind his head.

"Philosophy. It's killing my Dad."

Trowa recalled that the President's degrees were in Business. It had been one of the things that made him hesitate to accept this position in the first place - a college run by the former owner of a Fortune 500 company didn't seem like a place committed to a liberal arts education. But, the money had been good, the area nice, the faculty impressive and the students bright eyed and eager. And it had looked like heaven compared to the other position he had been offered.

"Getting your doctorate?"

Duo nodded.

"It's just my third year, so I've only just begun the hard shit but… yeah. Dr. Maxwell is something everyone in my family has been called for three generations."

Trowa had to smirk. He had actually liked that - the fact that the president's wife was also an academic - but he wondered just how much pressure there would be to growing up in a family of academics.

"You're the only one who cared to venture up here so far today," Duo said after a few minutes of companionable silence.

"I… sorry." Trowa assumed it was his cue to leave so he stood up.

"Nah, you don't have to apologize, I just didn't think anyone would make it this far up."

"You think we're all that out of shape?"

"Well out of shape and old, yeah," Duo smirked.

Trowa shook his head but found himself smiling a little.

Duo looked over at him and then up towards the ceiling and his smirk grew wider.

Trowa followed his gaze and saw that someone had woven holly and mistletoe around the central rafter of the roof.

Trowa looked back at Duo and arched an eyebrow in question.

Duo swung his legs over the side of the couch and stood up.

"Tis the season and all that," Duo suggested.

Trowa rolled his eyes. The number of ways in which this was a bad idea were too many to bother listing in his head -

And impossible to bother with once Duo pressed his lips against Trowa's.

The kiss was light, practically friendly, but then Duo licked Trowa's bottom lip, and it made Trowa shudder and draw in a ragged breath.

He reached out for Duo, tangling one hand in the hair at the back of his neck and pulling him closer even as they both opened their mouths.

Duo tasted like raspberries, like whatever dessert Trowa had swallowed a polite bite of downstairs and not been impressed by but the flavor was heightened in Duo's mouth, made potent and erotic.

He heard Duo make a sound in the back of his throat, a low moan that made Trowa's skin tingle and he felt Duo's hands around his waist, holding him close.

When they finally pulled away they were both breathing heavily, both a little overwhelmed by the intensity of the kiss.

After a moment of staring into each other's eyes, Trowa cleared his throat.

Duo blushed and stepped away and suddenly Trowa felt awkward. Suddenly Trowa realized he had just had his tongue down the President's son's throat and -

"Don't," Duo practically growled.

Trowa frowned.

"Don't what?"

"Don't do that thing where you freak out about this and get all 'oh shit, the President's son' and - just, don't do it. You have no idea how hard it was for me to get a date in college so just - just pretend I'm not me, okay?"

"But I like you," Trowa had to say.

Duo stared at him for a moment and then he grinned broadly.

"I like you too."


End file.
